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Right off the bat, I want to define some of my words, as used in this section:

Beauty: I'm not talking about being attractive. I'm using the word to reference health on the surface.Natural: This is a vague, undefined word in the food industry, but I use it to define anything that comes directly from the earth, or is produced by a combining ingredients that come from the earth.Synthetic: A quick way for me to summarize ingredients made by man. Some may call these "chemicals," but I don't want to get too dramatic.

Now that I got that out of the way:

I have reoccurring conversations with my friends, family, and co-workers about the homemade "products" that I use for my beauty regimes, or when I feel an ailment. It made sense for me to create a category within my blog, that contained entries about the recipes and such. That way, I can refer the conversations to my personal headquarters.

I've always been interested in using food and plants to heal the body, or incorporate into a beauty regime. I can remember during my high school years, clipping out articles from magazines that had homemade recipes for natural face masks. And I remember dicking around at the library while I was in college, and stumbling across a book called, Inner Health, Outer Beauty. I procrastinated whatever project I was doing to xerox excerpts from that book. It's always something that seemed logical to me, but also a little fascinating.

Fast-forward to 2012. At that point, my mom had been extremely ill for quite some time. Watching a parent suffer is more than enough motivation to begin eating better. Although I was commencing the lifestyle change as a preventative measure towards my future self's well-being, the immediate change that I experienced from eating cleaner food was astounding. I began to search the web for different food ideas, which led me to read about baking soda, which led me to an article about using baking soda as a shampoo. And thus began another movement.

After using items that are naturally created by the earth, and getting BETTER results for a fraction of the price, the beauty and pharmacy aisles have become practically non-existent, in my world. I shop for my kitchen, bathroom, and medicine cabinet in the grocery now.

It also made the scenery a lot more questionable. Is it necessary to have so many beauty products on the shelves, or for a person to be taking 12 different pills a day? I don't like that there are entire industries (food, beauty & pharmaceutical) that seem to be more focused around the dollar bill, instead of what is actually good for the people and the earth.

It would be helpful if more documented data existed, with cures or treatments that stem from food and minerals. It's absurd that this type of information isn't readily available, because I would like to cite credible references in my entries, aside from giving the "thumbs up" based off my personal, positive experiences.

Do note that the content here is not anti-science, of course. Science is a wonderful thing, and I'm not against all things that have been created in a lab. While there is much good that is produced by the earth, our ecosystem also has a dark side that creates illness and poison, and we are fortunate to live in an age where we have science to prevent and treat sicknesses.

What I am getting at, is that the content here should be viewed as logical, over factual. There is also an emotional background to this type of content, because it truly FEELS healthier to use natural products. There is also the feeling of satisfaction from not only making it yourself, but also getting better results, AND saving money while doing it. So... no synthetic ingredients, self-sufficiency, better health, and less money spent? That's what I want to share with you.

Disclaimers:

1.) Just because I have this blog section to share this type of information, please do not assume the extreme end of the spectrum. I am not a hippie living in the woods, nor am I claiming that I live a lifestyle of all-and-only natural assets and methods. I have a balance of natural and synthetic, with the scale tipping more into the natural side. There is still a lot to discover, and sometimes I prefer to choose the convenient synthetic path. I anticipate this to gradually evolve, and this section will follow my journey.

2.) I am obviously not a doctor, and not even a great non-doctor. Any content on LaurenStrec.com is not intended to be used as medical advice. So, don't be a moron.